Cadence

Red room presence requested now the message blinked. All round the room there was a flurry of activity. Samir woke up from his deep revere and blinked stupidly, all the others were already on their way. M was there with his ubiquitous sheaf of papers.

Sarika Khanna was trained in espionage. Tall, fair with hazel eyes, every time M looked at her he felt a surge of testosterone. Ususally she prowled Chandini chowk in salwar-kameez, speaking unchaste Punjabi, on her activa.

Aman Khan. Liaison officer. Hard to believe that the soft spoken man could stop hardcore gangsters in their tracks. His Arabic was a definite asset in these troubled times, especially when most trouble stemmed from the near west. It always irked M how it was the ’Middle East’, even though it was clearly to the west. But then lots of things had irked M more lately.

Vani Ganapathy. Msc Physics, IISc. halfway through her Phd. M picked her up noting her extreme analytical skills, would she like to work for the country’s think tank? Sure…did it exist though? Over pav bhaji and lassi he explained to her the intricacies of the organization. How the CBI and the government had created it, sometime in the 60’s. It was hard to believe that even in a country as corrupt and as underdeveloped there existed a think tank to rival any nation’s. Some of the country’s finest brains, heavy funding (some of it illegal, M smirked as he thought of all he had done) and the governments unending support, they had established it. In the mess that is old Delhi, in one of its many ancient mazes was a house no 14 approachable only by scooter and within an seemingly innocuous home lay some of the most sophisticated piece of computers the country had ever seen.

Shruti Deshpande. Weilded the rolling pin and a gun with equal ease. The team loved her food, she loved to cook. She churned out exotic dishes with alarming regularity and most team successes were celebrated at her South Delhi pad.

Samir Sinha. IIT Kanpur. IIM Ahemdabad. No one knew more about contemporary India more than he. With his vast knowledge and experience in espionage he was more the father everyone looked up to. The world often failed to realize just how deeply India was involved. Often it projected itself as a struggling third world nation occasionally throwing out a Pokhran or a Chandrayaan at the world news, a few inches in some papers. Foolish pop-fiction had glorified Jason monk, failing to point out to the quiet Raj’s and Shalini’s laboring away for Indian (and sometimes world) safety. 9/11, the capture of Laden (M’s smile would often turn into a laugh, whenever he thought of this) the eventual liberation of Myanmar planned, the dealing of LTTE, life went on (it was her birthday next week, he had to buy her a gift how would she like the head of the b****** responsible for the Mumbai blasts?).